Bliss
Photographer: Charles O'Rear
Date: January 1996
Location: Napa County, California, USA
Charles O'Rear shot this image on a January morning in 1996 while driving north on Highway 128 near Sonoma County, California. He stopped by the side of the road and photographed the rolling green hills near Napa Valley using a medium-format Mamiya camera. The photo was purchased by Microsoft and became the default desktop wallpaper shipped with Windows XP in 2001. With Windows XP installed on over 400 million computers worldwide at its peak, it is estimated to be the most-viewed photograph in history. O'Rear, a former National Geographic photographer, has stated that the hills in the image have since been converted to vineyard land. The photograph was chosen from a stock library and O'Rear did not know for years just how widely it had been distributed.
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